The keyboard on the Novatech nTablet running Windows 7: often in the way, and not always there when you'd like it

Though some might find this surprising, it pains me to write a negative review. I know what it's like to labour over something and discover that it doesn't come up to scratch - and that the reasons why it doesn't come up to scratch were staring you in the face if you'd only looked up to think about it.

First impressions

Which is why it pains me to tell you that I'm not going to be positive about Novatech's nTablet, "the UK's first Windows touch screen tablet" - with a 10.1" 1024x768 screen, 2 USB ports, 1.3 megapixel webcam, microphone, "up to" five hours' battery life (it did manage that in my tests), 802.11n/g/b Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, microSD card reader, and mini VGA display output. All this for the rather tasty price of £350 - that's £170 less than the much-hyped Samsung Galaxy Tab, while having twice the screen size.

The reason I'm going to have to be negative about it is nothing to do with the hardware, which is perfectly fine. It's the software. Windows 7, which it runs, definitively proves that there is a difference between a touch-screen operating system, and a tablet operating system. Windows 7 is, certainly, a touch-screen operating system. What it is not is a tablet operating system.

What, you might ask, is the difference? You discover this pretty much as soon as you start up. There's that brief flash of the bootloader - MS-DOS has never really gone away, has it? - and then you're in Windows.

Now on a 12" screen or above, 1024x768 means that the typical menu item or dialog box has control buttons (the "OK" or "Cancel" ones) that are easily fingertip-sized. You could control those with your hands, no problem. And of course if you're using a netbook, then you have a keyboard attached, so you can move around using the tab button, if there's no mouse to hand.

On a tablet, though, you've got no keyboard and no mouse. It's you and your fingers versus the interface design.

What's in a touch?

Turns out that a lot - and I mean a lot - of the interface elements on Windows are simply too small once you put them on a 10.1" screen to be easily controlled. They're too close together to avoid accidental taps; back buttons are too close to home buttons, the close/minimise/expand window widgets that you're so used to are just a finger smudge apart, and it turns into a vicious game in which you have to plan your angle of attack if you're going to hit the button you want.

Worse comes, though, when you try to do things like browsing and emailing - the two processes that we take as the essentials of most tablet use, or at least of basic Windows functionality.

Entering a URLis puzzling at first: where's the keyboard? You'll find the software version lurking at the sides of the screen, showing just the tip of one edge. Touch it again and it pops halfway out; touch it a second time and you have it displayed on the bottom of the screen. You can adjust its size, which is a blessing, except that if you make it too small then you won't be able to operate the keys. And I found it very difficult to type on, though arguably that's just a feature of software keyboards on tablet screens.

The actual browsing experience was good enough, though even here there were irritations aplenty lying in wait: trying to swipe the screen through a browser page was fraught with the risk of accidentally hitting a link, at which point you'd have to try to stop it or hit the "Back" button, which brought its own risks of hitting the "Home" button, in which case you'd need to hit the back button twice, assuming you could hit it twice in a row.

Email and other vices

Email was much the same; the operating system makes no concession - and takes no prisoners - over the fact that it's running on a tablet. It's the same email you'd get on a system with a keyboard. (I should point out that Novatech does offer a plug-in keyboard to go with the nTablet. The only problem with that is that the tablet plus keyboard works out rather more expensive than just buying a 10" netbook, so there's no advantage there apart for the fact that you can type in portrait mode - which, though entertaining and occasionally useful, isn't a prime reason for buying a tablet.)

Add to that the fact that you can't get the variety of apps you can for a tablet (whether from Apple or running Android). That's part of the point of those devices' portability: you trade their limited usefulness for the concentrated focus on doing one thing or another, without having eternal messages telling you that "Windows Software Updates are ready for you" or that "New hardware has been detected".

Tablets are not the place for fiddly messages like those; imagine trying to dismiss one of those dialogues but instead of hitting the "x" to close the box, hitting the main part of the message and so unwittingly being taken to the program with the message you deemed unimportant. If you want to imagine the future of the human race using Windows 7 on tablets, think of a finger pressing down on the wrong part of a dialog box forever.

Compared to Android?

Compare and contrast the large, finger-friendly buttons that you get on Android tablets and the iPad. Those has plenty of breathing room around them because its well-known that fingers fill many more pixels than a mouse pointer. Plus, of course, you get apps designed for finger-based interaction. Win-win.

There's also the problem that the Atom processor has keeping up with orientation: though the nTablet is sensitive to orientation, and will adjust the screen display to portrait or display as required, there's a brief period of darkness while it turns the screen off and on again when you turn it through 90 degrees. I've not come across that on any other tablet I've tried, whether iPad or Android. It's disconcerting, at best.

The upshot of all this is that using Windows 7 on the nTablet is a hugely frustrating experience. Though there are few tablet-friendly elements - tap to zoom, pinch and pull to squeeze and contract, and the keyboard pops out when you touch a text field - it's not enough to make up for the fact that Windows was designed to be driven by a mouse and keyboard, not your fingers. Add to that the inevitable lags you get when you do touch something (because it's powered by an Intel Atom, not a Core 2 Duo or similar) and you have a recipe for intense, enduring, teeth-grinding bad user experience.

Steve Ballmer has been insistent that there will be Windows 7 tablets available around Christmas; and the company has told all who approach it, whether press or manufacturers, that it's not going to allow Windows Phone 7 to run tablets. Both are strategic errors. Windows Phone 7 could make a fantastic tablet operating system (you'd get more on the front page, apart from anything), whereas Windows 7 is just awful. And manufacturers aren't allowed to run Windows 7 Starter (which would put a bit less strain on the processor) because that's only for netbooks, and doesn't support multi-touch.

Worst at the last

There's worse: Novatech is hoping to aim the Windows version at "educational customers" - in other words, teachers and children (and particularly the people who buy kit for them to use). To which all I can say is: NOOOOO! Unless, of course, you want to persuade children that computers are frustrating as well as boring, in which case go right ahead.

There is good news, though, some light at the end of the tunnel. The nTablet will also come in a dual-boot form able to run Android 2.2 (the version I tested didn't). That, I think, will be much more pleasant: from trying Android on a couple of 7" tablets (ie slightly under half the screen size of a 10" tablet), it's an elegant, tablet-friendly operating system - and the latter is a point that I can't emphasise enough. Windows might be fine for desktops. But it is not for, and you should never buy it on, tablets. You'll regret it, mark my words.